Here's to all the open source developers who put hours and hours of their lives into a project they built, put it out into the world, and now it sits with approximately zero users.

Thank you for putting labor into the world to try and help others, even if it's never been recognized.

Brag about your project here if you'd like!

Edit: if you saw this earlier, come back and check out all the cool projects people have shown off since!

Edit 2: I also think you're cool if you put any work into stuff you've made for free for people. How to videos and documentation, creative art, hell, fan fiction. You're making the world a better place by being in it and not charging anyone anything for it.

It's one of the things I think about regularly, like this @catvalente essay. People love to make things for one another. Share their work, just create for creating sake. AI and corps will never take that from us entirely. It's just too damn much fun to take the stuff your grey matter comes up with, make a thing, and let other people find it useful and enjoyable. It's just part of being human.

Maintaining your parks and neighborhood
Fixing up a community center
Painting murals
Writing a newsletter
Teaching free yoga
Writing fiction
Volunteering
And yes, coding things

It's all taking your time to make something and share it with people with no expectations of anything in return. Which is pretty damn cool. Brag about it and get some good vibes about your free labor.

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start